MALAYSIAN women's groups have reacted with outrage to a government proposal to impose restrictions on women planning to travel overseas on their own.
The mainly Muslim country is considering requiring women to obtain the written consent of their families or employers before being allowed to travel solo outside the country, reported Bernama, the state news agency.
"It is ridiculous, a totally
regressive proposal with regards to women's right to movement," said Norhayati Kaprawi, a spokeswoman for the Sisters in Islam campaign group.
The National Council for Women's Organisations called it unfair. "This is an infringement of our rights," said Faridah Khalid, the deputy president.
The foreign and home ministries came up with the idea in response to a string of cases where women travelling alone were used to smuggle drugs across borders, Bernama said, quoting Rais Yatim, the foreign minister.
Bernama portrayed the proposal as an anti-crime measure rather than a religiously inspired idea and said it was aimed at ensuring that a woman's family would "monitor her departure and serve as a preventive measure against being duped".
Mr Rais said the idea came out of a review of criminal cases involving Malaysians abroad. In 119 cases of Malaysian women being brought before foreign courts, about 90 per cent were linked to drugs, he told reporters.
The women's organisation Sisters in Islam said the proposal assumed that women were less capable than men of making decisions for themselves.
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